To ask what happened to having traditional values?

[mozzarellasticks]

I'm 23 and from a very young age I was told that it was 'right' to live life in a 'traditional' order.
For example: being in a relationship with someone, buying a house, getting married, and then having kids.
Not trying to be smug or on a high horse, just wondering what happened and why people are getting pregnant after knowing someone for 5 minutes. I'm generally considered to be have old fashioned views but want to know why no one else feels the same way

awww, no one knows better how everyone should lead their lives than a 23year old!

takes me back!

Ahhh, to be 23 again!

The arrogance & naivety of youth!

Come back in 20 years & tell us how it is, OP!

I don't think being young automatically means you have no sense, just limited life experience and some older people make fucking awful decisions

i was a bigger know it all then than i am now
thank god there was no social media!

Because these so called values were based on some kind of weird old-fashioned view of morality based on religious texts written thousands of years ago and don't meet the needs of our society today.

No one expects girls to be married off as teens, and certainly not to much older men. Which has the knock on effect of meaning if girls are going to have sex, they need to do it outside marriage. Society changes, most of us are okay with that.

Traditional values also insisted that it was okay to treat working class people badl. Ditto, that people of different races and cultures were worse than yours. Traditional values have girls stuck at home playing house and family and not getting the opportunities to explore, use their minds, achieve things for themselves or contribute to society in ways that have more impact than just within their immediate sphere.

Traditional values don't drive growth and science and experience and culture. And who people have sex with, when or how they choose to have children is completely irrelevant to almost everything else that goes on within society.

Me and DH got married without living together first and we had only known each other 5 months!

Worked for us. Married 39 years, very happy and very much in love. Most of our friends who knew each other for a good few years before marriage (some lived together) are divorced and on second, third or even fourth marriages!

Some friends still on their first marriage but are certainly not happy

*I'm 34 and actually the majority of my hundreds of Facebook friends of the same age have gotten married before having children. There was a wave of weddings around age 30, and now all the babies are starting to appear.

Actually I'm a bit surprised at how hardly anyone had a baby in their 20s, or out of wedlock.*

I could have written this. We (and I assume plenty of the other people I know) simply wanted to have our ducks in a row before having children.

I do think it's madness to have a child with someone who you barely know.
I don't envy previous generations who had to marry their first boyfriend.
My great grandparents and grandparents married in their teens. Having a baby before marriage was unheard of. I know for some of my great aunts the date of their wedding/first child 's birthday was always ' a blurr' . In other words they were probably pregnant before the wedding day but could not admit it for fear of being labelled a whore.
My grandmas elder sister was labelled ' a whore' by her brother for not wearing white on her wedding day. 😢
The same brother told another of his sister's that she could not leave her alcoholic, gambling husband. She was told never to come back to her parents as she had to lie in her bed now she had made it.
My aunt was criticised heavily for getting a divorce and 'bringing shame upon our family.'
No wonder people have turned their back on all this bollocks.

I do think it's madness to have a child with someone who you barely know

Couldn't agree more. But that's about practicality for me, not values.

Similarly, I got married, bought a house, had children. Not because it was a value thing but because those were the steps that made sense to me. I don't see people who did it differently having an inferior value system to me.

It was a smokescreen. Plenty of people (my great grandparents included) had traditional values but then had numerous affairs. It was all swept under the carpet!

You can only leave having children now because of contraception and more so because doctors now prescribe it to unmarried women.
In the not so distant past, the pill was only prescribed to married women.
My mil told me this. She was lucky as she wanted children at a time before it was available. When she enquired about it she was married.

I do think it's madness to have a child with someone who you barely know

I would think, for the majority of times this happens, it's an accident

Bore off op

Need to now go and scrub my eyes after reading the word 'bonk'

I have a friend who didn't live with her husband before marriage. They are still married almost 30 years later.

This is the order we did things in and I was quite keen to do it this specific order. Now? Well, tbh if I had our time again I probably would but I wouldn't be as worried about it all as I was.

Why?

I agree you should be living together before babies...in an ideal world

Because as Skirmisher said, you really don't know a person properly until you live with them, truly know them. It's all well and good going on dates with a person and only seeing them when you're both not tired/not grumpy/in the mood etc but you need to see them at all the moods and stages to know how compatible you really are. Not to mention know if they're lazy bastards who expect you to clean up after them etc etc

I have a friend who didn't live with her husband before marriage. They are still married almost 30 years later.

Which is wonderful, I'm delighted for her but surely it would be more wise to test run before committing to marriage?

My DB impregnated his girlfriend after 3 months of being together and they married when the baby was 1.5 months old. They have a terrible marriage and are often fighting, which unfortunately has a negative impact on their child, who has acted out in school because of this.

I think my DB is only staying now because he's afraid she'll get custody.

Meanwhile I've been with my DP 2.5 years and am currently pregnant, while we are not planning a wedding in the nearby future we have an incredible relationship.

I think you're right about waiting and getting to know your partner before adding children to mix, but I don't agree that marriage is relevant at all.

At 23 I probably felt similarly to you OP, that I wanted to do things the "right" way. Sadly life doesn't offer your right way to everyone and, oddly enough, life continues regardless.

Happiness in relationships and marriage is everything; I don't care if you're married 15 minutes or 15 years or not at all, but if you're not happy you shouldn't be there, tradition be damned. Those people raising their families in a "traditional" way but with zero happiness, laughter and intimacy in their relationship aren't modelling a great future for their DC and it would be terribly sad in his day and age to find people staying together "for the children" the way tradition dictates at the expense of their own joy.

I think it's simply arrogant to think there is a single 'right' way of doing things.

The only thing that matters is what makes practical sense - getting your finances sorted, having somewhere to live, your relationship being stable. Those things overlap somewhat with the 'traditional' way of doing things but not completely.

What I do know is that being judgmental is not an attractive trait.

For many people living together was not an option due to religious/cultural reasons.
Not saying I agree just pointing out facts.

I wanted to have a family in a certain way, and made very careful choices and took time to ensure that has happened. Now if my DH suddenly unexpectedly turned into an abusive (and/or) cheater I’d be kicking him out and my carefully planned family would no longer be as I tried so hard to ensure but I’ve given myself a bloody good shot at it by making careful choices about my career, partner (and getting to know him), marriage and timing of children etc. I had opportunities to skip ahead to some of the things I REALLY wanted but I would have had to compromise on how well I knew my the father of my kids and what I could offer my kids and ultimately the security of myself and my family.

Many people choose to just go for it regardless. I see it every day. It doesn’t always work out well for everyone.

Traditional values weren’t any better than current ones though. What makes you so sure old values were better? My Nan (in her 80s) fell pregnant at 15 and was forced to give her baby up for adoption. She lived the life with those values and it certainly didn’t teach her, or hundreds of other girls, much. My elderly family friends are married and absolutely despise each other. Their traditional values mean they won’t even consider divorce and have lived 60years of misery together. My sister was married. Her divorce sapped her of absolutely everything to the point where I thought I probably wouldn’t bother get married.
Traditional values do not = better.

And for what it’s worth, you do sound smug. I was a smug young woman once. Life taught me a few bloody lessons. Now I’m condescending instead

I think it's simply arrogant to think there is a single 'right' way of doing things.

Yep

But sometimes a little bit of being judgemental isn't a bad thing. I think a lot of problems people (especially women) have come about because they felt that they should be kind and not judge when really that man with 3 kids he doesn't support or that 30 year old who's never held down a job probably isn't a great potential partner and it's not judgemental to think so, it's sensible.